I barely used Reddit at all, but I started using Lemmy as soon as I heard it existed. My reason for not using Reddit is primarily because it has ads but also because I don’t want to contribute to a platform that benefits financially with free user content.
Unfortunately, most people don’t think about such things. They just register in the application where their friends are located, and there is a lot of different content.
The subreddits were becoming more and more toxic in the comments, and any attempts at defending oneself just results in getting banned.
I got attacked for using the wrong terminology, to which I politely told the commentor to go fuck themselves. I got banned for a week. So I made another account and contacted the mods. We argued, they banned me, I made another account, etc.
I was finally contacted by the main moderator of the sub, who actually conversed with me. We reached an agreement and my bans were lifted. However, Reddit Inc. permabanned me and all my accounts, email, everything. I had even contacted the mod of the sub, but unfortunately, Reddit had taken away all the mod tools that allowed the mods to change it.
This wasn’t the only time this kind of thing had happened. Anytime I made a post, I would get ripped apart in the comments. I’d eventually tell them to fuck off and then I’d get banned for being mean in the comments. I’m sorry, but if I’m getting attacked over stupid shit like installing a stove in my skoolie or commenting supportively on other peoples posts, I will fully go off on you and call you out PUBLICLY. If it gets out of hand, I turn it over to the mods.
Reddit is an absolute shit show at this point. Good riddance.
I never really liked it much - too many assholes, astroturfers and bots - so I was always open to moving somewhere else, as soon as I found somewhere I liked better. And I liked the threadiverse better.
I’d like to think it was my indignation at the API changes affecting 3rd party developers and horrible abuses of moderator privelige, but I think in my heart I know it was really just because RIF was going to stop working and I hate the official app.
I started using Lemmy a bit before the blackout and all that fun stuff. I was using both before the blackout, then just Lemmy during, and I realized I had a lot more free time and was enjoying the posts on Lemmy more, so I just stayed here full time.
Not all third-party apps have stopped working. For example, the Dawn app from F-droid works well. There is also a Stealth application that does not have the ability to log in to your account.
Because almost everyone on that site is a toxic piece of transphobic shit. There’s only so many kinds of microaggressions you can take every day before you decide to move to someplace else. I wish society would deal with places like that and throw people in jail that enable these assholes to be like that.
I didn’t fully stop using Reddit, but I can safely say I’ve had about a 95% reduction in total use time there.
After this summer’s fiasco, I have a bad taste in my mouth from them (I think many people do) so I am only in a small handful of communities that haven’t migrated to the Fediverse. The site in general feels much less busy.